Nestled between two medium-sized mountains was a rugged little valley. There was no land to farm, so the people there lived off mountain herbs, wild eggs, and goat’s milk. To the people of the towns that dotted the plains to the southeast, these were the lands of barbarians. If not barbarians, then creatures far worse.
There was a place, high on one mountain, where the trees thinned and a vast, grey outcrop overlooked the foothills. Two thin men dressed all in grey, were perched on this outcropping.
“They’ve harvested,” Rae said. He couldn’t make out any of the figures of the plains-people, but the patchwork landscape which had been a verdant green only a week ago, was now a dead dark brown.
“Hmm, you ever wonder what it is they’re growing down there?” Gaori asked.
Rae might have shared that the fields grew cabbages, which sometimes brave traders pickled, and brought up the mountain road to sell, but was interrupted by the sound of footsteps.
A boy, no older than ten, had followed them into the deep forest. He had proudly proclaimed he would be assisting them in their scouting. His mother was a woman who worked in the kitchens. She had sent him out to gather berries and herbs for dinner. Despite clambering across the rocks like a goat, the boy was afraid of meeting a forest witch, or some other demon, so he never strayed too far from the young masters.
“Don’t get too close to the edge,” Rae said, stepping away himself. It was clear the Emperor’s men had not made any significant moves on the mountain. The civilian plains-people, fearful of the mountain’s savage inhabitants, had kept to their own business also.
“All is well here, so we’ll be heading back soon. Do you have what you need?”
The boy hid his canvas sack from view, telling Rae all he needed to know. When the boy said nothing, Gaori spoke up:
“We have much to talk about on the way down, and we’re slower than you, so hop to it and catch up to us soon,”
“Yes sir” the boy stammered, and dove back into the undergrowth, scouring the earth for useful plants.
Rae and Gaori were young and fit and could descend the mountain with ease. But since they knew the child was scared, and dark would soon be falling, they lingered longer than necessary. Goari stopped to pick some berries of his own and offered some to Rae.
“It must be very hectic in the Shak’s camp, what with the little shali due any day now,” Gaori said, wiping his fingers on his tunic.
“That’s very presumptuous of you,” Rae said, “who are you to say it won’t be a shakje this time?”
“Everyone knows an evil spirit cursed the Shana to never bear a son, and even if she did-“ Gaori stopped at the sound of snapping branches. There was an odd, rumbling screech, and a frightened cry.
“A bear,” Rae said, but Gaori had already taken off in the direction they had left the boy. Goari had always been a lumbering oaf, but when he wanted speed he got it.
Rae crept after him, his bow drawn, making no more noise than the wind in the grass.
The boy might have been young, but he knew that the worst thing one could do when faced with a bear was to back down. He stood in a clearing, cowering behind his arms, knees shaking.
The bear was a brown mass a dozen or so feet away. It was a female and didn’t have the look of a witch’s familiar. Its eyes were dull, not sharpened by the will of malevolent spirits. It was plump with a good hide, but still had some growing to do.
Rae cursed as he watched Gaori launch himself at the creature, letting out a growl twice as wild as the one they’d heard earlier. In his hand was his short sword. Rae sighed. He readied an arrow and prayed his cousin wouldn’t advance any further.
The bear let out a miserable little grunt, before fleeing into the undergrowth. As soon as it was gone, what was left of the boy dissolved into a puddle of tears.
“Y-young master… thank you… saved me…” he wailed.
Goari, who had met the bear with such valour, was at a loss at what to do with the child. He went to clap the boy on the back, and at the last moment, had second thoughts and only tapped him.
“There, there. It’s gone now,” he said.
Rae, after confirming the beast was truly gone, put his bow away and joined them.
“Was that the first time you’ve seen one?” he asked the boy, who nodded through his sobs.
“You did just the right thing, your mama will be proud when you tell her,” Rae said, before noticing something odd.
The boy’s trousers were soaked through, and a puddle was at his feet. Rae couldn’t help but recoil at the realisation and the boy’s cries hit a new octave. He pinched the bridge of his nose.
“You’ve… you’ve… you’ve had a…”
“Don’t tell anyone!”
About a minute too late, Gaori realised what was wrong.
“Oh! Oh no. There, there, we can sort this out,”
The boy wailed all the way down the mountain, till they found a creek for him to bathe in. He jumped in fully clothed and came out sniffling.
“Young masters, if anyone asked how I got so wet…”
“You scared off the bear and fell in the creek, unrelated incidents, say no more,” Gaori said.
Despite his shivering, the boy was in good spirits for the final leg of the journey. Soon the path leveled off and grew less littered with rocks and tree roots. The first huts and tree-houses of the camp came into view.
The sun had long since set, but the lanterns still sat unlit. No one was around, not collecting water from the river, nor sitting around fresh fires.
“Father must be hosting everyone for dinner at the house,” Gaori said.
However, the deck outside the Duke’s residence was just as abandoned as anywhere else. Gaori and Rae were at a loss for words until they caught sight of a man who had been on sentry duty that day.
“Big bro!” Gaori called, and the man startled.
“Young master, you’re finally back,” he said, and his expression did a strange twist when his gaze fell on Rae, “you should both hurry inside, grave news just came from the capital,”
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
The man was the child’s uncle, so he agreed to make sure he got back to his mother safe and warm. This left Rae free to catastrophize.
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“Oh heavens help me,” he muttered under his breath. It seemed like the deck beneath his feet could give way at any moment. Sending him hurtling to the uneven ground below, tumbling over jagged rocks and splintered wood down towards the river.
“There, there,” Gaori said and tapped him in the same dithering way he had tried to comfort the frightened boy.
“The child’s been born. They’ll be coming after me next,”
“You don’t know that,” Gaori grabbed his arm and started guiding him towards the main house. Rae didn’t have the strength to argue, but he didn’t see any point in rushing to hear the news that would spell his end.
“And even if the hag has had her son, she has no power here. She can’t kill you just like that,”
Oh, no she couldn’t. She’d have her assassins infiltrate the camp and wait for Rae’s guard to falter. They might slip a little poison into his drink, or sneak up on him in the bathtub and stab him in his heart till his blood was drained.
If they decided to garrote him in his sleep, they’d need to kill Gaori too. Otherwise, they’d be discovered and it would be war. But maybe the Shana would prefer it that way. An excuse to wipe the whole Kaolin clan off the map. His home. His mother’s home. Gaori, Auntie and Uncle.
“Come on Rae, I’m not going to carry you,” Gaori said.
Rae found the strength to ascend the steps, and Gaori dragged him inside.
Rae’s Aunt and uncle were sat at the table, feeding an eagle nuts. It must have been the bird that had carried the heaven-forsaken letter from the Shak’s camp.
“Darlings,” the Duchess Kaolin said, glancing at Rae.
Don’t worry Auntie, I won’t let anything terrible happen to you because of me. Rae was already planning how he was going to fake his death, sneak past the imperial barracks and start a new life among the plains-people. If not that, he could brave the evil spirits and venture so deep into the forest that no assassins would ever find him.
“We’ve got some sad news, come sit down,” Duke Kaolin, Goari’s father, said. The cough he had that morning had subsided, but his cheeks looked more ashen and sunken than Rae had ever seen them.
“Has the Shana had her son?” Rae asked, his voice quiet.
“What? No,” the Duke said, then paused and studied Rae. When he found whatever he was searching for, he sighed, and continued, “It’s not the Shana. It’s the Shak,”
“What’s happened to father?”
The Shana having a son was something that had been a foundation of Rae’s nightmares for more than ten years. It made his blood freeze, unleashed a swarm of bees in his brain, felt like an arrow through his stomach. But it was something he had spent many a sleepless night planning and preparing for.
Whatever misfortune might befall his father, Rae was ashamed to admit had never crossed his mind. It was even more shameful that the news came almost as a relief.
“Sit down, my child,” the Duke said.
It wasn’t the news he was hoping for. His father would not want him to return to his side. Even if he did, Rae would be a fool to go. Not while the Shana was there, possibly carrying a future shakje.
“His majesty passed away in his sleep last night,”
“Passed…” Rae wasn’t sure he’d heard right. His father wasn’t young, he was older than uncle. But he had never been frail or sickly like Rae was, like uncle was, like mother had been. He was big, broad, and blustering. Not the sort of man who would so…
“Could it be-“
“She had nothing to do with it, “ the Duke cut Rae off, “It wouldn’t make sense for the Shana and her clan to make any unsavoury moves until after the baby is born,”
He was trying to comfort his panicked nephew, reassure him that his father wasn’t murdered. But was the alternative any more reassuring? That his father had just dropped dead with no forewarning? Or perhaps his father had been sick for years now, but had never cared to write to his only son, ask to see him just one more time.
“What do the healers think?” Rae asked.
“Duke Bejuk had personally been attending to him. He was the one who wrote. He suspects his majesty’s heart gave out,” Duke Kaolin explained.
So that was it.
His heart, what heart? No heart for his son. He used his final days to call the best healers from Camp Bejuk but never sent so much as a word to his flesh and blood.
Rae stamped those thoughts down like they were coals still smouldering.
“Uncle, what happens now?” Rae said in his this-isn’t-affecting-me voice. In his periphery, he could see the tears in his auntie’s eyes.
“You will need to prepare to return to the Shak’s camp, your camp now,”
Rae didn’t know which protest to voice first. He couldn’t go to the Shak’s camp. Not while the Shana was there! Waiting, like a spider in a web, to deliver the machine of his destruction.
“Son, you must go, and protect your cousin. Our clan will need to be represented, when he becomes the Shak, and Rae will need an ally by his side,”
“Baba, don’t tell me you’re not coming! You’re the Duke!” Goari said.
Caught out, Duke Kaolin started his first coughing fit of the evening. When he was finished, his voice came out weaker than before.
“You know my health is fragile, and you must be prepared to take on my duties whenever needed. An old, fragile soul like me can do little to protect Rae, and there are our people here who depend on our leadership…”
By the time he finished, he had paled considerably, and his gaze was hazy. Duchess Kaolin stroked his hair with one hand, and wiped her tears with the other, as if this wasn’t an act he put on every other day.
Seeing his uncle play his usual games to get out of performing his duties shouldn’t have been comforting. But to Rae, it was a mundane cure to his overwhelmed mind, and to a simple man like Gaori, being told he was depended on was the greatest motivator he knew.
“Baba, Mama, I’ll protect our Rae with everything I have!”
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Rae had little insight to offer to the planning of their journey to the Shak’s camp. While his uncle, auntie and Gaori talked in circles about the safest routes, the coming weather, and essential supplies, Rae munched on a goat’s cheese and blackberry flatbread. Rather than allow him to stay up all night sulking, Duchess Kaolin gently encouraged him to get an early night.
“Would you like some wine, to help you sleep?” Duchess Kaolin asked. Rae shook his head. Wine had once helped him relax when his memories of home had become overwhelming, but he had built up a tolerance strong enough that his fears still niggled at him when he drank himself silly. His stomach was already hurting enough.
“Don’t wake me up when you stumble in later,” he said to Gaori, smiling as casually as he could. Annoyingly, his cousin didn’t argue that he was as light on his feet. He smiled so gently that it turned Rae’s stomach.
“I won’t. Go get some rest,”
Rae had no recourse other than to stomp off to his room, seething. Gaori had to choose this of all times to act the big brother figure he often professed to be. The nerve!
Being angry at Gaori was a balm. It kept Rae calm as he left the main house, and crossed the bridge to the little adjoined tree-houses the Duke had built for them when Rae came of age.
Rae’s annoyance was still simmering, as he threw off his hunting tunic and boots, splashed some water from the basin over his torso, and clambered up to his loft and under a dozen blankets.
Rae had lived with his aunt and uncle for twelve years, and in the early years, he took ill several times a year. Whenever he lay delirious with fever in the nursery in the main house, his auntie would crochet him a new blanket, or his uncle would come back from the hunt with new furs to throw over him. By the time he was an adult, Rae had grown out of his frailness but still liked to sleep all bundled up.
It was in his cocoon, that Rae’s frustration with Gaori finally gave way to grief.
“I don’t want to go,” he muttered to himself.
To leave this little loft, leave auntie and uncle, never hunt pheasants in these mountains again…
If his father had called him back, things would have been different. There wasn’t much in the Shak’s camp he yearned for but his father had once been something.
Now...
Well, there was nothing of him left to hope for, and Rae couldn’t spare a thought to grieve him.